PHILLIES: Chipper recalls his Philly memories

PHILADELPHIA — Sometimes walking to your locker like you just dragged yourself from a plane crash isn’t enough proof for people.

Chipper Jones is retiring after this season, but the fact that he’s having a pretty damn impressive season for a 40-year-old third baseman on a playoff-bound team (.297 BA, 14 HRs, 60 RBIs in 102 games) means that in every city he goes, someone can’t resist asking him the same question:

Think you might reconsider?

“Did you see me walk in here?” Jones said to the inquiring reporter Friday afternoon before the Braves’ shoo-in Hall-of-Famer prepared for his final weekend of baseball against the Phillies. “I’m in a lot of pain today. It’s time. I’m happy I’ve played well, happy I’ve produced. But it’s time to go.”

When the Phillies help a brief pregame retirement ceremony for Jones, they sent Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins out with their version of a generic gift card: A painting of Jones at the plate at Citizens Bank Park done by Dick Perez, who is like the organization’s Thomas Kinkade.

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Not exactly the high quality of Milwaukee’s mother lode of sausages, but Jones is grateful for the memories he’s had in Philly, including one of the first of his big-league career.

“I was in the dugout in ‘93 when they beat us (in the N.L. Championship Series),” said Jones, at the time a 21-year-old September call-up who wasn’t activated for the postseason. “The (Curt) Schillings, the (Terry) Mulhollands, Dutch (Daulton), (Lenny) Dykstra, all those guys.

“I remember Mitch Williams striking out Bill Pecota (to end Game 6). I remember leaving the Vet, and all the fans outside the stadium almost tipped the bus over. It was a little intro into what Philly fans are all about.

“A lot of good baseball has been played here in Philly.”

A lot of it was played by Jones, who entered Friday a career .332 hitter against the Phillies -- 28 points above his lifetime average. His 49 homers against the Phils makes them tied with the Mets as the teams taken deep the most by him.

Whether it was due to his abnormally high success rate at Veterans Stadium and Citizens Bank Park, or another reason, no player named J.D. Drew or Scott Rolen has taken more verbal grief from Philly baseball fans than Chipper.

“I don’t know, fans in every park try to take the best players on the other team out of their game,” he said. “If it’s questioning the ancestry of your mother, or talking about your wife and kids, all that kind of stuff, then they are going to do it. That’s something you just have to conquer.”

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When the retirement talk subsided, Jones took the opportunity to sound off about the new wildcard format, which has added a team to the postseason and forced the two non-division winners to play a one-game playoff to move on.

The Braves have been a lock to be one of those wildcard teams for weeks. They entered Friday night’s game 86-64, 6 1/2 games better than the Cardinals (80-71), who lead the race to be the wildcard runner-up.

“There’s nothing like cutthroat baseball for the fans, and people love that 163rd baseball game, and I’m sure that’s why they did it ... You look at certain things, and we could possibly have the second- or third-best record in the National League when the season ends, and we’ll have to play a single-game playoff just to get in. That doesn’t seem fair.

“Now, if you said the two wildcard teams had to play a best-of-3, I’m OK with that. We play a three-game series all the time and concentrate on winning those all the time. But anything can happen in a one-game playoff — a blown call, a bad day at the office. In a three-game series at least you have some sort of leeway.”